The Actor Nakamura Sukegoro II as Aso no Matsuwaka, a Ninja (Shadow Warrior), in the Play Ima o Sakari Suehiro Genji (The Genji Clan Now at Its Zenith), Performed at the Nakamura Theater from the First Day of the Eleventh Month, 1768

Documented through ukiyo-e.org from the Art Institute of Chicago, this Katsukawa Shunsho yakusha-e captures Nakamura Sukegoro II as Aso no Matsuwaka, a ninja (shinobi or shadow warrior), in Ima o Sakari Suehiro Genji (The Genji Clan Now at Its Zenith), performed at the Nakamura Theater from the first day of the Eleventh Month, 1768. Sukegoro II was a major Edo tachiyaku of the mid-eighteenth century, often cast in martial and villain roles, and Aso no Matsuwaka belongs to the long line of shinobi characters that kabuki adapted from the popular literature of the period. Shunsho, founder of the Katsukawa school and the leading reformer of Edo ukiyo-e actor portraiture, frames the figure in the dark robes and tightly bound posture associated with the stage ninja. As a kaomise production, the play premiered the theater's troupe for the coming year, and Shunsho's print served as a souvenir for fans tracking who would be performing where. The composition is a clean single-figure portrait against a blank ground, with the patterned robes and the actor's individuated face carrying the entire image. This 1768 print sits at the leading edge of Shunsho's career, when the Katsukawa school was rapidly establishing its method of recognizable-likeness yakusha-e as the dominant Edo ukiyo-e mode for actor prints.